Happily Ever After
by PrincessAlica
Summary: one-shot that would not leave me alone even though I was trying to write a chapter for another story. Warning might make you cry. Has been updated with a few small corrections and few sentences here and there.


Author's Note: This was completely inspired by Iris's fabulous story and a conversation with CaptScarlett. So to the two of you, I say thank you. And I tip my hat (if I ever wore a hat) to you. I'm sorry if this is sad. It came to me, and it would not go away. Then I needed to explain a little about it which is why the second part is there. I guess tear-jerkers are what I end up writing. Thanks for reading. :)

She stared out into the distance without wavering her gaze. She was still looking for him, waiting for his return, a return that was not to be. An event that she had spent the last seventy years waiting for. He had promised to return, and in her mind what anyone said was law and gospel. That the years had slipped by her, that his age would be so well advanced that he could not be alive did not occur to her. He had told her as he walked out the door that he would return, and so she waited with an unnatural patience for his promise to be made complete.

Her children had tried to tell her, tried to explain that he would not be back, but she would hear none of it. They were only children, what could they understand of matters of the heart. She ignored their protests and persisted in her hopes even as the city grew up around her, making what in her childhood had been nothing more than a small town into a bustling city with a vitality greater than even her own.

And then finally her straining eyes could see him clearly in front of her though cataracts had long since stolen her vision. He stood there in all of the finery of days gone by as if he had not aged a day since they met on that long ago last brilliant day before the war had torn the Southland apart. His hand was out stretched, reaching for her as if to resume a waltz on a far off dance floor. She stared up at his coal black eyes for only a moment -- drinking in the beauty of him-- before taking the offered hand. There was no time for recriminations or accusations, it was time for them to be together once more.

The years seemed to fall away like the petals of rose in full bloom. The aches and pains of advanced age disappeared into oblivion as she rose to embrace him, leaving a part of herself behind. "You've come back." She whispered softly, the light dancing in her bright eyes.

"I said that I would return, didn't I?" He returned in his soft drawl.

"You certainly took your sweet time about it." She said in a voice that was not filled with anger, but a familiar sparkle of combativeness.

He chuckled at her words. "There never was anyone quite like you, my pet. I've missed you."

She smiled up at him before she buried her face into his chest inhaling the faint scents of tobacco and whiskey and the particular scent that was his, as his strong arms snaked around her. "I missed you so much." She breathed.

His lips brushed against her hair as he breathed in the scent that was hers and hers alone. "We're together now. That's all that matters, isn't it."

She nodded her assent and stared up at him longingly. "Finally." She murmured.

He could read the longing in her eyes, could see the aching in her face even as he bent his head to capture her lips once more. He sighed softly upon tasting the sweetness that he could drink forever of. "I'm home." He crooned for her ears alone.

"I'm home. Where ever you are is home, Rhett." She held firmly onto his hand as he turned and led her up the stairs down which drifted the soft childish giggles and baby coos that had been missing for years. It was a place time had forgotten within the grand home that he had built for her right after the war ended when he had made her his bride. And now finally, he had returned to bring her home.

* * *

"She's gone." She whispered softly, tears trailing down her face. Her mother had finally been released from the prison that had held her captive for seventy years. Seventy-two years of waiting for a dead man to rise from the ground and come back for her. And from the soft words that had escaped from her lips in those final moments, Ella knew that he finally had returned. Those last breaths held the words of a mother that she had nearly forgotten existed.

The story in itself was simple and tragic. Only weeks after their stepfather had left just after Aunt Melanie's death, he had been found by some undisclosed person dead above Belle Watling's house of ill repute in a room that had long been held as Rhett's own. Scarlett could not accept the news she was given. Upon being told of his death, it was as if a switch in her brain had been flipped shutting down the logical side that had at one time been so prevalent, that everyone had relied upon.

Everyone said that he had drunk too much liquor, that the alcohol had killed him. But Wade and Ella knew the truth. It had not been the alcohol that had killed him, it had been the death of his beloved Bonnie that had robbed him of life. And in just the same way, Scarlett, Ella's dear strong, resilient mother had been lost when he had died. Her mind would not allow her to believe the reality and so she persisted in telling anyone who asked for the next 72 years that Rhett would be returning for her.

She had continued living, living as if he would return the next morning apologizing for his misbehavior, as if he were merely off on another one of his adventures. She had continued to be a part of her children's lives and then her children's children's lives and their children and their children. But she was never the same Scarlett as she had once been. And Ella cried tears of relief that finally mother would be with her beloved Rhett, and would finally be at peace. For now Ella was the only one of her family left that remembered Rhett. Wade had died fighting in the war, and everyone else had been gone long before that. But to Scarlett's grandchildren and great-grandchildren she was a pillar of a time gone by, a era consumed by War and upheaval. She would tell them the stories of life before the war and after the war, but for her time had stopped when Rhett's life had. And they watched her with awe and amazement, but no fear. For that part of her had disappeared with Melanie and Rhett.

And now the light had faded from her eyes. Her limp hands, weighted down by a massive gaudy ring, were growing cold. Ella smoothed her mother's gray hair away from her face one last time and looked at her. The smile that rested there would be the last testament of a love that had reached beyond time and space and life and death. Scarlett O'Hara finally had her happy ending.


End file.
